Yearly Archive for 2008

: 2008

In a previous post, I mentioned that I voted for Obama, then went out and bought a handgun. First handgun that is mine, not my husband’s. Yesterday, I went shooting for the first time in approximately 12 years, and shot a handgun for the first time in at least 15. Took me a while to go to the range, because when you buy a handgun, sooner or later you expect to have the serious intention of putting metal into a human body, and (along with sex) that’s as about as morally serious as you can get. …

Religious arguments for and against legal recognition of same sex marriages (because this is what we are talking about, the marriage already existing in the hearts of those involved) are irrelevant for two simple reasons. The existence of God or the Gods cannot be proven, and even if these Gods existed, they would not be human beings, still less would they be citizens of this Republic. …

There are some mistakes so ridiculous and so deadly that only experts can make them. That’s happening now, every time some economist or policy wonk or government official or business “leader” comes up with some new plan to bail out the economy or some new rationale for keeping the status quo. For today’s economic crisis is the product of a moral self-delusion. And neither Adam Smith’s invisible hand nor all the upturned palms of corporate America nor all the fists in government can solve it. That’s up to us, the citizenry of the United States. So I write this for those who understand that citizenship has an economic as well as a political aspect, and who wish to be honorable citizens in both dimensions. The economic surface of the fallacy, which everyone understands but few care to address, is that we could go on forever outsourcing jobs by the millions, bringing in and letting in immigrants by the millions to drive down wages, while gorging on cheap imports, living on credit and assu …